


At Aphelion

by Aniyha



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Mythology/Religion, Angst, Depictions of Bipolar Disorder, Existential Crisis, F/M, Humanstuck, Not Canon Compliant, Red Romance, Reincarnation, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-30
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:14:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 17,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28420764
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Aniyha/pseuds/Aniyha
Summary: "Everyone knew that the universe was made by the Two Goddesses: The Ram and The Spider. For the universe was inevitable, and all it needed was to be lucky enough over a long enough period of time.Sollux knew this, but he didn’t have to believe it."The trolls won the game, but only those who had God Tiered were able to claim The Ultimate Reward. The rest were reincarnated into humans and left without any memory of their previous species or their victory. Aradia and Vriska were left to pick up the pieces, and Aradia is starting with the troll closest to her.
Relationships: Sollux Captor/Aradia Megido
Comments: 13
Kudos: 19





	1. Phantom Body

The night air was cool. He could tell it was despite being indoors because it was third autumn, when the planet was gearing up to plunge its inhabitants into a snowy hellscape for perigees. There wasn’t a time he didn’t think that being outdoors was equivalent to being torn apart by angels, mind, but there was a very particular circle of punishment just waiting for those who went out at a time like this.

He hadn’t been doing anything. Lines of code blurred over by lack of sleep and lack of nourishment danced on his screen. Just one more line, he kept telling himself. Just needed to close the loop while the perfect way to do it was still in his pan, then he would go and grab something to eat and let his body slip into the sopor at long last. 

But he needed to leave. There was a nagging, pulling sensation, like a thread winding around his mind. The sound of feverish typing stopped. He tried to shake it off. He stood up from his chair, gritting his teeth, oculars sparking because this was usually so easy to be done with, but the thread only wrung him tighter. 

He stepped out of the view portal. He caught himself with his own power, of course, but when he was under the control of someone else, he could hardly call it his. She was in his head, as if he was dancing on her strings, or if she was watching him wriggle in her web. The night air was cool.

Shit, _this_ dream again.

Now that he realized that it was a dream, he could try and stop it. The operative word being ‘try’. He wanted to scream to shock his brain into freeing him, but his vocal cords refused to obey. He tried blinking repeatedly, but while he had control over his own eyelids, the motion did nothing to stir his waking body. He was travelling faster now, the blur of the hive stems melting into open plains that only looked like smears of green-grey paint on a canvas, but he had known these plains; he had flown over them a few times before.

He could see the hive in the distance, and--

“Hhh!” 

He rose with a start, the twin sounds of his phone alarm blaring and heartbeat thundering enough to bring him back to reality. Automatically, he tapped the snooze button, but his pulse would not be quelled as easily. Groaning, he unceremoniously fell back down onto his bed, but he flinched a little when his horns just barely missed scraping against the wall. 

Wait, that was wrong. He entertained the idea of running his hands through his hair, just to double-check, but doing so would only make him feel more like he was losing his actual mind. He just needed a moment to himself. 

He would get one, because he lived in an apartment by himself. 

His name was Sollux Captor. He was 22 years old and freshly graduated with a Bachelor’s in computer science. He mostly did freelance work, but if he could land a job with better pay so that he could move out of the shitty apartment he called home, he wouldn’t complain. There were, in fact, several projects waiting at his computer that he could be working on right now, but at the thought, his mind flashed back to the alien glow of the screen he had been working at in his nightmare. 

“Can’t get a break even in my own fucking mind,” Sollux groaned to himself. _Especially_ in his own mind, he added internally. 

Thinking of which, this time it was the fourth night in a row that he had had that specific nightmare. It almost felt like prophecy, if he could deign to believe in such a thing. He didn’t know why his subconscious decided to plague him with nightmares stemming from the planet that the Two Goddesses came from, but he was going to find a way to make them stop.

Sollux sat back up in bed, being careful not to move so quickly as to trigger a headache. Once he was up, he reached for his phone again, only to squint at it as he set the brightness to the absolute lowest it would go. The window blinds were shut, so he wouldn’t have to worry about conflicting light making his eyes more fucked up than they already were.

It was a Saturday, and despite Sollux being able to work effectively whenever he wanted, he still needed the occasional break day. The money was nice, sure, but even looking at the screen of his phone made his stomach turn. Part of him was waiting for when the numbers and letters in front of him would change to inscrutable characters of Alternian that he could somehow decipher regardless. He had better make this quick. 

As much as he didn’t want to get out of bed, he equally did not want to turn the entire day into a depressionfest of doomscrolling on his phone. If he fell asleep again, he ran the risk of having that nightmare again, and the reminder of how his heart beat in his chest as if it was about to burst was enough to get him out from under the covers. Moving to stand, he held his phone in one hand while using the other to turn on the overhead light. He let his eyes adjust to the new brightness for a moment before walking over to his work desk. It was also just his desk, but it sounded like he knew where his life was going if he called it a work desk.

Sollux took some sticky notes from the top drawer, set his phone down next to them, and opened up the map app. The letters on the screen flickered in his vision, but he managed to scribble down the address he had saved. 

“Ram’s Skull Bookstore and Metaphysics  
100 Derse St.”

He also took down a basic list of directions, because he knew he wouldn’t be in the mood to check them on his phone when he was outside. The walk would take him about fifteen minutes or so, and in a rare show of optimism, he let himself hope that he would have his head on straight by the time he arrived.

With a goal in mind, it didn’t take long for Sollux to get ready for the day. A lukewarm shower did little to help with his mood, as did the rest of his personal grooming, eating, and dressing, but having on his tinted glasses helped with his photosensitivity. They also hid his heterochromia, which he was thankful for. He was enough of a freak of nature as was, and didn’t need to give strangers even more reasons to stare. 

When he stepped outside, he felt the familiar tingling of a migraine start to sprout from the back of his skull, but he let his eyes adjust while he was still in the shade. When the feeling died down, he started walking. 

The walk actually felt kind of decent once he got used to it. An object in motion stays in motion, he supposed. He hardly ran into anybody else until around the halfway mark, which was when he started to hear someone yelling. It was only one voice, and it didn’t sound as if they were mad, but rather like they were projecting to reach a wider audience.

As he got closer, he saw the source of the sound: A middle-aged looking man, wearing a sandwich board featuring a particularly vengeful rendition of The Ram. Her eyes were pure maroon, her horns curling so much that they were cut off by the board, and she held flaming meteors in each of her hands. There was some kind of text written at the bottom, but he couldn’t read it, as they were at opposite sides of the road. 

“The end is coming! The Maid shall cleanse this world of its living in forty days! We shall be ushered into her eternal night in forty days!”

Had to be someone with the Cult. Only followers ever referred to the Two Goddesses by their titles, as opposed to their morality play names. Invoking animals made them feel more like they belonged in Aesop’s Fables than on stained glass windows. Yet, as staunchly irreligious as Sollux was, even he knew that the doomsayer’s prognostication was a gross overestimation of The Ram’s desire to interfere with the universe. Through cultural osmosis, he knew that the Two Goddesses were opposing yet complementary forces. Darkness and light, maker and taker, observation and interference. 

Everyone knew that the universe was made by the Two Goddesses: The Ram and The Spider. For the universe was inevitable, and all it needed was to be lucky enough over a long enough period of time. 

Sollux knew this, but he didn’t have to believe it. 

He kept walking until the doomsayer was out of earshot, but his mood had been sufficiently soured. Only a few more blocks left to go, and the bookstore would be nestled in the corner between a lot awaiting sale and an ice cream shop. Not the most glamorous of locations, but Sollux wasn’t looking for glamor. 

The chime of a bell sounded off in the otherwise quiet store, followed by the door closing. Sollux looked around. He had the mental image of the building being some musty tomb that just so happened to be filled with books, but the room he was in was immaculately kept, if a bit cozy in terms of space. There was a counter to his left, and the actual books to his right, kept in organized and dusted shelves.

“One second!” A voice called from the backroom. Sollux glanced at the space past the counter, then, not knowing where to rest his eyes, began to look over the crumpled sticky note in his hand again. He was really going to do this, wasn’t he?

Before he could turn on his heels and leave as quickly as he entered, the door behind the counter opened to reveal the sole worker at the store. Made of beaming eyes and wild hair, she looked larger than life, which somehow both eased and increased Sollux’s anxiety. Her skin was a sun-kissed tan, and her eyes were brown like the earth. In a lot of ways, she looked like the type to be into anything but metaphysics, but she also looked like just the sort. 

“Sorry about the wait,” the woman chimed as she smoothed out the fabric of her outfit. In lieu of a uniform, she wore a business casual dress; a black v neck that was lined by a lanyard dotted with pins. One of the pins had a maroon Aries symbol on a black background. “Welcome to Ram’s Skull! My name is Aradia! How can I help you?”

Sollux flinched. He felt vulnerable enough just standing in the room, all too aware of the weight of his body, but this took the cake. He couldn’t ask about what he had come for. Not right away. “Which of your parents decided that naming you after The Ram was a good idea?” He resisted the urge to enunciate The Ram, if only to avoid digging himself into an even deeper hole with this complete stranger. 

Aradia laughed, but it was the kind of laugh that felt like she was laughing with you, not at you. “I named myself. My last name is the same, too. I don’t suppose you believe, if you’re using The Ram as your preferred moniker?” 

Sollux was beginning to sweat. “Do you bring up religion to every customer you get?” 

Aradia smiled. He noticed that she had dimples. “Only to the ones who bring it up first.”

“Fuck,” he cursed under his breath. He was mentally begging himself to shut the fuck up, but he couldn’t. “Yeah, I don’t think they did shit. Even if they did make the universe, and that’s a pretty big fucking ‘if’, it isn’t like they’ve ever shown their faces. We could easily be in a watchmaker situation, where they just fucked off right after.” 

Aradia hummed thoughtfully, eating up the seconds with the gesture before responding. “What is your name?”

“Wh--” Sollux sputtered, his face contorting into a mixture of offense and self-disgust, “what does that have to do with this?”

“Absolutely nothing,” she smoothly answered, shrugging her shoulders a little. “I just like knowing the names of my customers.”

If he had been named anything else, perhaps this line of questioning would have gotten them off the path that invariably led to conversations that haunted him at two in the morning. “It’s Sollux.”

Aradia’s eyes widened. “Last name?”

“...It’s the same.”

“Which of your parents decided that naming you after one of the Minor Gods was a good idea?” 

“My dad.”

Aradia quirked up an eyebrow. She was leaning against the wall; settled in for an answer a little longer than that.

“Fuck, alright, I guess this ties into what I’m looking for, so sure, tragic backstory: Unlocked.” Sollux threw his hands up in the air, but his body still felt like it was being weighed down. He really should have waited for a less shitty day to do this, but if he hadn’t gone that morning, he might not have wracked up the nerve again for a while.

Besides, there was something about this god-named girl that made her strangely easy to talk to. Maybe it was the smile, the genuine one that didn’t feel like it was just for customer service. Maybe it was the fact that they would never talk again once he was freed of his nightmares. Whatever the case, he found himself filling up the dead air once again. 

“It was after my mom died. She… had been in labor with me at the time. Neither of them were particularly devout back then, but the experience ‘woke him up’, he’d tell me. Said he named me after the Mage of Doom to try and get him off my fucking back.”

“And did it work?” Aradia asked, genuinely curious to know.

Sollux laughed once, a singular, sharp “hah” that sounded like it was being choked out more than anything else. “I wouldn’t be here if it had. No, the whole experience just stuck me with shitty nightmares. Nothing else has worked, either. So, now I’m here, like the start to the world’s worst joke: A nonbeliever walks into the religious owner of a bookstore and says ‘ow’, because he is the fucking worst when it comes to both existing in a physical space and interacting with other humans. Fuck,” he cursed at himself, having run out of steam to say anything else.

“Well, barring the identity crisis you seem to be having, I think I can help!” 

Aradia clapped her hands together before Sollux could get a word in edgewise. “But! The counter really isn’t the place for a talk like this. We can chat in the breakroom, if it helps put you at ease.”

Sollux sighed. She didn’t have to be empathetic to have eyes; to see the way that he was struggling to carve out space for himself in the air of the room. “Yeah, sure.” He had no idea how long this would take, but sitting down sounded like a godsend. 

“Okay, come on back!” Aradia stepped back over to the room she had come from, opened the door, and held it open for Sollux, who stepped around the counter to reach it. The room itself was well-furnished and just as cozy as the store proper. Even more books filled the shelves that lined the walls, and there was an area meant for breaks off to the side, with two chairs positioned near a table. They were both made of wood, but one had a dark red cushion, while the other was dark blue. 

Sollux adjusted his glasses. 

“Why do you have two chairs here if it’s just you? I can’t imagine you get people rambling about their nightmares often enough to justify it,” he mentioned as he took a seat in the blue chair, which was closest to the door. 

“Oh, I have a coworker who drops by from time to time,” Aradia answered while sitting in her own seat. “She isn’t exactly scheduled, and when she does arrive, it’s often as if dictated by the roll of a die, but I welcome the company.” 

“I would say that that’s fucking weird, but weird is a little lost on me at the moment. Can we just start?” 

“Of course!” Clapping her hands together once more, Aradia beamed to Sollux before settling herself down for the discussion.

“The realm of dreams can seem utterly nonsensical, but many ancient cultures believed that they were how the Two Goddesses communicated with their creation. What do you dream about, if you don’t mind me asking?” 

“The same thing, over and over again.” Sollux paused, trying to get his thoughts in order. “This is going to sound absolutely fucking delusional, but I dream that I’m on Alternia.” 

“What do you do on Alternia?” Aradia asked, not missing a beat.

Sollux paused. He didn’t expect such… acceptance, he guessed? He needed to stop tempting fate like this, but maybe there was a chance that he could walk out of the store feeling slightly better about himself. “Not much. At least, not to start? I’m just kind of sitting around, coding, because work can’t leave me alone even when I’m on an alien fucking planet.”

Aradia nodded. “Are you a human when you dream, or are you a troll?” 

“A troll,” Sollux sighed, embarrassed. The fresh memory of thinking that he had horns was still ripping through any remaining sense of pride he had. He still had to fight the urge to actively check the top of his own head.

“I see. What else do you do?” 

“I don’t know.” A beat. “I don’t mean as in ‘I know but I don’t want to talk about it’, I mean ‘I don’t know’.” He could no longer resist the urge, and in an anxious move, he ran a hand along the top of his head. It only touched hair. “I would start feeling like something is pulling me, and I’m trying to make it stop, to wake up, to do anything but see how the nightmare ends. I start flying to who knows where, and all I know is that I would rather do anything but be there. Not like that.” 

If Sollux didn’t know any better, he might have thought that he saw Aradia pale ever so slightly. “Have you ever seen how it ends?” She asked. 

Sollux shook his head. 

“Try to. Your mind is probably fixating on it because it needs to reach closure with what it symbolizes.” Aradia chose her words carefully, doing her best to skirt around what was clear as night to her.

A vague feeling of discomfort was starting to reach Sollux again. He tried to pick at the hem of the cushion he sat on to distract himself from it. There was a single loose thread that he could make into a little ball between his thumb and pointer finger. “And what, exactly, does it symbolize?” 

Aradia looked off to the side for a moment, pursing her lips. “It could be a lot of things. An expression of dislike for your work, or your relationship with religion, for instance. You have to figure out what it means to you, once you have all of the pieces of the puzzle.” 

“No straight answers, all vague advice,” Sollux huffed. “I shouldn’t have expected anything less from someone with The Ram’s name.” 

She chuckled. It was a sound that reminded him of wind chimes, in the mystical, light and airy kind of way. “And you’re distracting yourself from feeling the begrudging acceptance of fate. I understand that fate has not been kind to you in the past. It hasn’t been kind to any of us.” Her smile became a little more saddened, her eyelids just a little lower, and it gave her the look of having the weight of the world on her shoulders. “Even if it doesn’t feel like it, I assure you that something better will happen if you let this run its course.” 

Sollux shifted in his seat, feeling as though he had been misled and was going to therapy as opposed to getting a solution to his nightmare. She was right about one thing: He wanted to focus on anything other than the fact that he was just going along with this. “Got anything that might help with keeping me asleep, then? Half the time, I wake up before I get to the end anyway.” He didn’t need to mention that it was because of the mortal terror. 

“I would just recommend sleeping pills for that,” Aradia admitted. “If you don’t have any of your own, there are natural equivalents that I can give to you.” 

“Oh. No, that’s fine, I have some I’ve been working through back home anyway.” He scratched the back of his head, wondering if they were even good anymore. Even if there was that bit of doubt, he didn’t want to inconvenience this woman more than he already had.

“Great! Just try to experience the dream as much as you can, and come back when you have more of an idea of what it means. Would tomorrow be okay for you? I’m open on Sundays, and I don’t get too many customers, so feel free to drop by whenever works for you!” 

“Uh, yeah,” Sollux responded, the feeling of discomfort bringing him to stand from his seat. He felt like he would be crushed by the air itself if he stayed still any longer. “I’ll try tonight. No promises,” he added quickly, unsure of his own mettle. He wanted the nightmares to stop, not to have to experience them fully, but if he just had to go through this once… 

“Thanks for the help, Aradia, but I should go. See you tomorrow, if all goes well. Or horribly. Fuck, both, I guess.” Awkwardly shrugging, he turned and started heading for the door. 

“Of course!” She beamed a smile that he wouldn’t see. “Everyone needs a little help sometimes. See you, Sollux!” 

Aradia watched as the door closed, then listened for the bell’s chime to signal that he had left. She then let out a long sigh, made up of every last bit of air in her lungs, before tanned skin gave way to grey. The shell of her disguise, the creation of which being an ability inherent to God Tiers that had claimed The Ultimate Reward, faded to reveal her truest form. Curling horns and maroon ram’s eyes, wings that flickered against the back of the chair, and the symbol of Time on the chest of her godhood. 

“Spirits,” she spoke to herself, “that was so weird. He didn’t even recognize me. I thought he might have, even when I seemed human, but…” The game really was toying with them. “It probably won’t get any easier,” she concluded to the now empty blue chair. “You’re due for checking in on me in three, two, one.”

The notification ping for Trollian sounded off right on cue. Rolling her shoulders, Aradia stood up and went over to the computer, trading one place to sit for another.

arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]  


AG: Hey, Aradia!  
AG: Aren’t you going to thank me for 8ringing you your 8oyfriend?  
AG: It wasn’t easy lining up all those daymares for him, 8ut you know I have all the luck.  
AG: All of it!  
AG: And luck can 8e easily manipul8ed.  
AA: ok im going to stop you there before you go into another monologue about how luck can mean anything  
AA: i appreciate the assistance though!  
AA: whenever you are done with getting terezi to remember i will be happy to bring you both back to the point that we arbitrarily call the present :)  
AG: Gee, thanks. I’d h8 to leave you w8ing, Miss I Experience All Points Of Time Simultaneously.  
AG: You know, this is still 8ullshit.  
AA: what is?  
AG: You know what I mean! The whole “8luh 8luh the game isn’t done with us yet, how a8out you now run through your entire team, who are a 8unch of humans now, and get them to remem8er something they’re waaaaaaaay 8etter off forgetting” thing!  
AG: Alternia fucking sucked!  
AG: The game sucked even more, somehow!  
AG: You would have to 8e ridiculously cruel to think that this is somehow doing anyone any favors.  
AA: vriska we have been over this  
AA: everyone deserves to have their own memories and bodies back  
AA: from there they can decide what to do with them  
AA: it isnt about cruelty or kindness  
AA: its about giving them the choice  
AA: if you are so against this then why are you trying so hard for terezi?  
AG: What, are you trying to play fussyfangs without the fangs now? Don’t stick your nu8 where it doesn’t 8elong.  
AA: whatever you say  
AA: look someone just came in i need to go for now  
AA: keep me updated?  
AG: Yeah, whatever.  
AG: I’d wish you good luck, 8ut, you know! :::;)  


arachnidsGrip [AG] ceased trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]  


AA: i know  


apocalypseArisen [AA] ceased trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My brain decided to go haywire, leading to this chapter being written over the span of a single day. Half the length of A Quartz's Habit, in less than 24 hours! Wild. If you read this, thank you for your support! Big thanks to Keys for helping me with tagging and formatting!


	2. Seeing the Forest

Sollux went to sleep that night with the aid of sleeping pills he barely used. Being awake for longer meant he could do more. Even if the exhaustion caught up to him eventually, it also meant staving off the nightmare. Given that he now needed to stay asleep in order to endure the totality of it, however, he figured that that night was as good a time as any to get back into the routine. 

He had held the pill bottle, checked the expiration date, shook it to hear the rattle of the gel capsules. He thought that he could have just disregarded everything. What did some random shop owner know about what he had been through? 

He revised the sentence to ‘what did Aradia know about what he had been through’, then took a pill. 

Sollux wouldn’t feel the effect immediately, but he killed about thirty minutes’ worth of time before he started feeling unnaturally tired. There was a heaviness in his eyelids and a numbness at the extremities of his body that he wasn’t used to, but he reminded himself of his goal: Make it through to the end. 

When he turned off the lights and flopped into bed, it only took him five minutes before he was asleep. 

Around ninety minutes later, he was entering REM sleep.

There was no proper beginning to the nightmare. It always started like it had been freshly cut in medias res: Sollux typing at his husktop. The text flying across the screen was familiar to him in a way that didn’t make him question it. He was stuck coding that loop again. He knew the line, could say it perfectly and know exactly what it meant and what it would do. He just had to go through this once…

Right. This was a dream. 

Sollux blinked. That was probably the fastest time that he had realized it. His eyes felt uncomfortable in a way he couldn’t place. He figured out that it was because he didn’t have pupils when he was like this. Tentatively, he moved a clawed, grey hand up to touch the top of his head. It bumped into twin sets of horns. 

That was all the time he had before he started feeling the strings. He couldn’t help but try to resist them, but he knew that he would fail. His body, so freshly claimed from the clutches of his sleep, was now being controlled by a much more malevolent force. 

The window was opened by alien hands. His body was caught by an alien force. The night air was cool. His power-- ‘psionics’ he would think while under the clutches of the nightmare-- sparked against him harmlessly, only adding another layer of sensation. Even if it was fake, it felt too real.

What could this possibly symbolize? Sollux wondered as he propelled himself across Alternia. He wanted to let the blur of color numb his mounting anxiety, but it only made him all too aware of how his heart was about to burst. He tried not to let the feeling get to him, but it was difficult when all he could hear was the wind and his pulse. 

He was beginning to slow down. Over the horizon was the hive-- the house-- the place that he had been trying to get to. A feeling of nostalgia and gut-wrenching horror coursed through his body. He knew the plains, and he knew that building. 

There was something in his hand. When did he grab a glass? The liquid inside looked like honey, but his dream-mind gave him the impression that it was poison. If one of the last things he wanted to do was fly out to her hive when he was like this, the absolute last thing he wanted to do was drink mind honey. 

But he was already locked in. He could see someone step out of the building. They were too far away to see specific details, but he caught a single, horrifying feature as he was made to drink. The artificial tingle of honey against his tongue felt like he was ingesting electrified sludge, and that was before he felt the uncontainable swell of power burn at his nervous system.

All he could see was red and blue, but in his mind’s eye, he kept the image of ram horns close. 

Sollux woke up.

“I--” he choked out, his throat feeling painfully dry. He got out of bed quickly this time, needing to get the raw feeling to stop. He navigated through the dark with a learned ease until he made it to the bathroom sink. The faucet made a squeaking noise when cold water started flowing through it. He remembered when it used to startle him as he began drinking with his hands. He could get used to the sound. He could get used to having to attempt to take care of himself like an absolute gremlin, drinking out of the sink at Ram-knows AM. 

He couldn’t get used to the nightmare.

For good measure, he also splashed his face with the water. He turned to the side, where he knew the shower was but couldn’t see, but decided against it. There wasn’t much of a point if he was going to need one to wake up when it was actually morning. 

The faucet squeaked one more time when he turned off the tap, but he didn’t leave for his room immediately. His hands were cold now, and his palms were wet as they rested against the counter. His ears were creating noise that shouldn’t exist when it was too quiet for his mind to cope with. Sollux looked up from the sink; wiped his eyes with the dry back of his hand. When he opened them in front of the mirror, he swore he could see them faintly glowing red and blue. 

He blinked once, and the color went away. 

“I’m just out of it,” Sollux told himself. His lisp was slightly thicker when he spoke, as the sleeping pill made his tongue feel sluggish. “That’s all this is. You can’t psyche me out anymore,” he hissed to the mirror, tapping his temple with his finger, “because I’m fucking done with your cryptic subconscious message bullshit.” 

If he thought too hard about how he was talking to himself in the dark at an unknown hour of the night, he might have broken down. Instead, he turned around and walked back to his room.

Sollux sat down at the edge of his bed. The covers were askew from when he had thrown himself out of them just minutes previous. Wanting to know what ungodly hour he had woken up at, he reached for his phone, fumbled with where exactly he had left it, then pressed the power button. 

1:27 AM. That actually wasn’t too bad. There were quite a few nights where he would be awake naturally at one in the morning. He chalked up the shitty feeling to completing the nightmare and the sleeping pill working in tandem to absolutely fuck his sense of time.

He tapped the power button again, then fell so that he was halfway laying on the bed. It didn’t feel comfortable, but nothing did. If he had flopped back down with his head close to the wall, he was sure he would flinch from the feeling of phantom horns. What kind of design was doubled up horns anyway? Sollux’s mind had to have been messing with him to leave him with the shitty aesthetic he had when he was a kid. The zodiac was a goddamn mistake. 

How was he supposed to process any of this? He wanted to have at least some kind of opinion on the matter before breaking it down with Aradia, but whenever he thought about the flashing lights, he started to get a headache. Could he even be photosensitive in his own thoughts? 

Sollux got up, grabbed an aspirin, swallowed it with more tap water, then returned to bed. 

He was still avoiding the most important part of it, he felt. The troll that he had been forced to see had looked like depictions of The Ram, except… smaller. Her horns weren’t as curled. He had a hunch that if he had free will over the events of the nightmare; that if he flew closer to her and got a better look, that she wouldn’t look any older than 12. 

He considered all of this and came to the conclusion that his beef with religion was deeper than he had thought, but the nagging feeling of missing something was still lodged in his chest. 

Only one thing was certain: First thing in the morning, he needed to talk to Aradia.

Sollux slept for the rest of that night, only to be awoken by an alarm for eight o’clock that he vaguely remembered setting. Part of him wanted nothing more than to settle himself back in bed, surrounded by blankets, and resume enjoying a restful slumber not plagued by nightmares, but he remembered that he had somewhere to be today. At this realization, the mattress suddenly felt about as comfortable as a pile of rocks. 

Sheets were unmade once more as their owner rapidly prepared for the day. Showering only made him feel even more energized, and once he was as presentable as he could be, he stepped out without stopping to let his eyes adjust. 

But it was okay! The realization that he was at the start of a manic episode was more than enough to distract him from the photosensitive headache he was getting! He was going to get his fucking answers, make sense of something that had been haunting him for his entire life, and he would get to go back to his apartment and code like his life depended on it before it was even time for lunch. 

The walk didn’t take as long this time around, probably because Sollux was speedwalking without intending to. He hadn’t even run into that doomsayer, thank both the Goddesses. He didn’t think that he would mind it as much as he did, but as he thought of the blatantly false depiction of The Ram, he felt an uncomfortable sensation from underneath his skin. 

It didn’t matter, he assured himself. It didn’t matter because even when taking into consideration the existence of a cultural standard for what ‘The Ram’ stood for, that didn’t mean that she was literally real, and so no depiction could truly be false. 

When he made it back to Ram’s Skull, Sollux opened the door and entered without hesitation. With no sticky note to take the brunt of his excess energy, he took to pressing on his cuticles with his short nails. 

“One moment, please!” Aradia called out from the break room. A few seconds later, she stepped out, this time in a maroon top and black pants. She wasn’t wearing the lanyard, but the Aries symbol was displayed prominently on her shirt via a black outline. 

Sollux briefly felt underdressed for being in jeans and a yellow t-shirt, but the feeling went away as quickly as it had formed.

“Good morning, Sollux!” Aradia cheerfully greeted him. Her smile was wide, and it showed the dimples on her cheeks that he had seen yesterday.

“Morning. Look, can we cut to the chase here and get into the dream discussion part?” Sollux asked, already walking around the counter.

“Oh, of course! Come in,” she responded, opening the door just in time for him to pass through the threshold. 

The two took their previous places at the color-coded chairs, but while Aradia took her time in reaching the farther seat, Sollux sat down quickly. His leg was already bouncing in place by the time she sat down and smoothed out her skirt. 

“I assume this means you saw it through to the end?” Aradia’s voice was slightly more hurried than usual, but still held the thoughtful air that it normally had.

“Yes, and holy shit, I am so ready to be done with this. No offense to you, you’ve been great, but this nightmare has kind of been a theme in my life that I could really do without.” If Sollux spoke any faster, he would have been threatening to trip over his words altogether.

“I understand. What exactly did you see?”

“The beginning part was the same-- fuck, it always is, except this time I was able to figure out that it was a dream a little faster. Like, usually it takes me until I’m flying to realize, but this time, it was before that.” 

“Okay,” Aradia nodded. “What else?” 

“I knew that I wasn’t gonna be able to change anything. I mean, it’s been the exact same sequence of events on repeat, but I used the time I had while I was in control of my body to, uh, check my horns.”

Aradia straightened up in her seat.

“The horns that I had in the dream,” Sollux continued, partially correcting himself. “There were two sets or something, and it kind of pissed me off, since I guess whichever rotted out part of my brain is responsible for dreams is in cahoots with whichever one thought it was a good idea to run with a duality aesthetic in fucking middle school.” 

“We all go through phases like that,” Aradia commented softly, her shoulders falling by a centimeter or so. “Continue?” 

“At that point, I started feeling the pull again. I think trying to resist it is just part of the sequence, because it didn’t matter if I fought it or not. The end result was always the same. I got to this house, and then I realized I was holding a glass of something. It looked like honey, but you know how in dreams, you know things you aren’t supposed to know?”

“You get a vibe from them.” Aradia smiled, her eyes crinkling with the motion. “I’m familiar, yes.”

“I knew that there was something wrong about it, like something really, really bad would happen if I drank the stuff. And something bad did happen! Fuck, before I even try to figure out how to say this next part, I know you’ve been super accepting and cool with my shit for absolutely no reason, but I am about to admit to what is probably blasphemy for someone in with the Cult. If you want to, like, kick my ass out to the curb after this, I won’t blame you.” 

“I won’t mind a little blasphemy. You already admitted to not believing in any of this, remember?” 

“Your funeral.” Sollux huffed. “I’m just gonna say it. I think I killed a kid version of The Ram. I mean, all I saw was flashing lights before I woke up, but it was the same vibe with the honey. I just knew.” His speech was starting to slow back down, as if his body was catching up with the atmosphere in the room. 

Aradia looked a little more tense than she had yesterday, but was taking it pretty well for a Cultist, in Sollux’s opinion.

“There wasn’t…” She spoke up, only to trail off for a moment. Her eyebrows were furrowed, and when she looked at him, it felt like she was looking through him to try and find something. “There wasn’t anything else?” 

“No? Should there have been?” Sollux’s fingers found the bit of thread at the cushion’s seam again; started pulling at it.

“No,” Aradia answered, suddenly sounding sure of herself. “Sorry, I had a hunch about something. I guess I was wrong.

But don’t worry! I still have another theory!” She was back to beaming smiles and large dimples. It felt a little fake to Sollux, to switch back to this kind of ecstatic emotion so quickly, but she was still trying to help him, even after he obviously made her uncomfortable.

“Forgive me if my interest in your situation feels like it is disproportionate to the time I’ve known about it, but it is genuine. If you feel comfortable talking about the ending more, what do you think it means?”

“Shit,” Sollux cursed, letting go of the loose thread to instead resume pressing at his cuticles again, “I thought it was something about religion, like you had guessed. Like, I must have a lot of spite for The Ram somewhere if my subconscious wanted me to kill her for years.” 

“How did you feel when it happened?” 

“Awful. Sick. Mad, but not at her. More at myself, I guess.”

“Do those sound like the emotions that you would experience if you were committing premature deicide out of spite?”

Sollux paused. The back joint of his thumb had been busy pushing the cuticle on his ring finger, but it froze in place, forgetting its job in the moment. “No, not really.” 

“It means something else, then. Have you ever read the RTTU?”

“The what?”

“The Road To The Undoing.”

“Oh, fuck, the journals? My dad made me try and read them as soon as I was capable of reading. Thought they’d help me cope, or whatever.”

“Do you remember the very beginning?”

“Vaguely,” Sollux admitted, looking off to the side in thought. “Something about the cycle of life and death, I think.”

“Right. It was about how the Maid went through cycles with her physical body over the course of creating the universe, and that the universe would also go through such cycles. Some of The Bodies get a little glossed over, mostly from a lack of textual evidence, or a penchant for translators to interpret some as purely poetic.

However, what you’ve just told me about your nightmare sounds incredibly similar to what happened when the Maid died for the first time. She described being killed by the Thief as part of their cycle of revenge, with the weapon being one of the Minor Gods.”

“The Mage of Doom.” Sollux’s throat felt dry.

Aradia nodded solemnly. “My theory is that you’re remembering the events of The Road To The Undoing. You’ve been suppressing the beginning to a long and arduous story, Sollux. I’m sorry, but I do not think stopping this will be as simple as reviewing the events of a single nightmare.”

Sollux went quiet. He felt like his soul had been punted clean out of his body. Gone were the last traces of his short-lived mania. There was a midnight ride to Depression Town, and he was the only sorry fucker with a ticket. 

Aradia was talking again, but Sollux couldn’t hear her. He was staring down at the table while his ears blared with the white noise meant to drown out silence. He could see her get up with his peripheral vision, and he almost braced himself for her to start shaking him, but she didn’t come any closer. 

He felt a little closer to reality when the loud thunk of a tome hitting the table shook the noise from his eardrums.

“...Sollux?” He was starting to hear her again. “Alternia to Sollux?” 

Sollux blinked. “I’m fine, I’m fine. You don’t have to break out the pseudo-Alternian.” 

Aradia looked confused for a moment before realizing what she had said. “Oh. I have a habit of slipping into it at times,” she explained, her face flushing a light shade of red. “You sort of shut down for a second.” 

“Well, I have a habit of doing that when I find out that horrible shit is going to continue happening, and that my attempts at getting rid of this one nightmare will potentially lead to having more about the bloodiest book out there. All while I’m in the place of my namesake, no less.” 

“If that’s your issue, trust me, there are much worse things to read before bed!” Aradia chimed.

“If this is your attempt at consoling me, it isn’t helping,” Sollux deadpanned.

Aradia pursed her lips. “That’s okay. Anyway, what I was saying was that I wanted to loan you my copy of the RTTU. It might help you contextualize certain events, if you experience them in your dreams down the line.” 

She patted the top of the tome. The cover was thick, and the title was written in a flowing maroon cursive. The words were in all lowercase, but the zeroes were bigger than the letters, and had diagonal slashes cutting through them. 

“What if I don’t want to take this?” Sollux raised an eyebrow before pushing lightly at the bottom of the book with his fingers. It did not budge.

“It wouldn’t be a hassle for me,” Aradia assured him. “I have plenty of other copies. This is a bookstore, Sollux.”

“No, I mean, what if I don’t want to take this, I leave, and I live out the rest of my shitty life suppressing whatever nightmare comes next because I don’t want to fuck around with living through the entirety of the journals?” 

“It won’t be the entirety of them. Just the major parts that the Mage lived and died through, assuming my theory holds. That cuts a good 50% of content!” 

“Wow, lucky me. Alright, fine, I’ll take the fucking book. But if your theory doesn’t hold and I sleep like a baby tonight, I’m coming back just to tell you I told you so.” 

Aradia smiled at Sollux, but there was no scrunch of the eyes, nor the dimples that he was beginning to take as a trademark of hers.

“I look forward to seeing you again either way, Sollux.” 

“Sheesh, you don’t have to say it like that, Aradia.”

“Like what?”

“Like,” Sollux scrunched up his own face and made an ambiguous gesture with his hands, as if doing so would get his thoughts in order. He quickly abandoned both actions. “Nevermind, it’s nothing. Forget I said anything.” 

Sollux reached for the tome and picked it up to appraise its weight. It would suck to carry back to his place, considering the cover alone was decently heavy. She must have sprung for the most complete version possible, or maybe this one had the original Alternian in the back? He might flip through a few pages later, just to see. 

“Is that going to be all for today, then?” Aradia asked.

“Yeah, I think I’ve had enough horrible, life-altering revelations for one day.” 

“That’s fair,” she chuckled. “And look, if you ever want to talk about anything other than the religious implications of your nightmares, I’m open for that, too. You don’t have to say yes or no now. Consider it an open invitation. If there is anything on this Earth that I have an abundance of, it is time.” The last thing she wanted was for him to cultivate a bad association-- either with her bookstore, or herself. 

“Yeah, I’ll… I’ll think about it. Sometime in between the restless nights, my actual job, and reading The Road To The Undoing,” he grimaced, posing to display the book to Aradia.

“Great! You’ll have to tell me what you think about it when we meet up next!” Aradia smiled, tapping the center of the cover with a nail.

“Yeah,” Sollux responded, feeling stupid for saying ‘yeah’ so many times. “I’m gonna go, but thanks again.” Holding the book to his chest with one arm, he nodded towards the door, opened it with his free hand, and walked out.

Another bell. Another revealing of curled horns and horizontal eyes. 

“I bet you’re busy with Terezi right now,” the winged troll spoke to the blue chair. “Actually, I don’t bet. I know! You’re hanging out at some mall that doesn’t exist anymore, and you’ll leave to go get drinks from a vending machine.” Smiling softly, Aradia leaned in so that her elbows rested on the table, with her hands cradling her face. “You might start freaking out about how she hasn’t remembered anything yet. You might punch the vending machine, knock a free soda from it, and play it cool as if that was what you meant to do the entire time. Or…” 

Aradia stood up. She walked over to her computer, woke it up, and opened Trollian.

“You might chat with me for a little while.”

apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]  


AA: you are free for the next five minutes and 37.846 seconds right?  
AA: i need to talk to you  
AG: Woooooooow, hello to you too, Aradia.  
AG: Are you going to 8ring me more spooky messages a8out what I’m doing wrong?  
AG: Ru8 it in that you’re on the moral high ground while I take all the heat?  
AA: no  
AA: i wanted to tell you that you can stop manipulating solluxs luck now  
AA: the daymares are in motion and the course is set  
AG: Fine. 8ut I want an answer first.  
AG: A str8 one, too! None of your usual dodgy flighty nonsense.  
AA: i have a feeling i already know what this is about but go ahead  
AG: Did you give him that knockoff of my Journal? This is a yes or no question, Megido.  
AA: i did  
AG: Holy shit.  
AG: You really have no sense of su8tlety, do you????????  
AG: I already knew the second you asked me to pound him over the soft human head with memories, 8ut this is on a whole new level!  
AG: You must really 8e desper8.  
AA: desperate isnt exactly the word that i would use here  
AA: i would rather say that im excited!  
AA: there are so many beautiful things hidden away in this world that i cannot wait to share with everyone! :D  
AG: Yeah, live it up while you can!  
AG: You’ve 8een alive for, what, a sweep now?  
AA: oh its been longer than that  
AG: Time travel aside, it’s 8een a sweep.  
AG: I remem8er you talking a8out how you had to get a head start on your little mission. Scheming and plotting with your own irons in the fire!  
AG: Or should I say gold in the fire?  
AG: Either way, it feels a little satisfying to know that the game isn’t done with you, either.  
AG: It’s taking its toll. 8r8king you down. Tick, tock, tick, tock!  
AG: It might not make up fully for what happened 8efore, 8ut let’s just say that I am reeeeeeeeally looking forward to messaging you again with Terezi in tow.  
AG: I know she’ll come to her senses while your little 8om8 with legs fum8les along even when given the 8ook of your exploits!  
AG: You should have started with Tavros just to make this a proper rematch!  
AA: youre back to thinking of this as a competition then  
AA: you know the more i think about it the more i realize  
AA: the game may have thought us ready to ascend but the game was wrong about many things  
AA: and even then ascension doesnt seem to mean all that much  
AA: but i dont need to discuss that with you considering your  
AA: personal experience  
AG: Oh, fuck you!!!!!!!! You might have gotten your 8ody 8ack, 8ut your pan is just as short-sighted!  
AG: Every time I’ve 8een called a 8itch, you deserved it 8 times more!  
AG: You d8n’t even care a8out any 8f these losers, do you???????? I 8et you don’t! You j8st want to undermine me every ch8nce you get!  
AA: that isnt it  
AA: by the way terezi will find you to ask about the drinks in one minute and 12.573 seconds  
AG: Y8u can’t get rid of me th8t easily, Megido!  
AA: one minute and 5.288 seconds  
AG: I’m messaging y8u aft8r this!!!!!!!!  
AA: bye  


apocalypseArisen [AA] ceased trolling arachnidsGrip [AG]  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We won’t be sticking with this “dream, discussion, Trollian” cycle for long. Next chapter, we’re going to be reading ~~The Bible~~ ~~Homestuck~~ The Road To The Undoing! Thank you to everyone who has shown interest in this humble fanfiction! I love each and every one of you!
> 
> Sidenote: The format for the logs has also been changed, so if Chapter 1 looks a little different, that's why! I'm happy to say that I am now using homestuck5 for formatting, which will make the process a lot smoother on my end.


	3. The Road To The Undoing: First Form and Second Form

The tome had eyes, and it was staring directly at Sollux. He could feel it. He had been able to live with it at the side of his desk for the past several hours. He even ate and got some work done after having met with Aradia. But as much as he wanted to put off diving right back into the storm that was Aradia’s theory, he didn’t think he was capable of doing so for much longer.

Maybe if he knew what exactly he was going to have to deal with, it would make coping with it a little easier. If it turned out that Aradia was wrong, then Sollux guessed he would be able to hold slightly better conversation with her on the topic. Any justification would work so long as it made revisiting The Road To The Undoing worth the time sink.

Giving himself up to the book, Sollux turned the monitor of his computer off and pushed his keyboard to the side. The decorated cover took its place at center stage. For a moment, he got the impression that he was tampering with a work of art, and so he turned the book upwards to see how the pages gilded in red gold reflected the overhead light. If he was more inclined to poetry, he might have made a connection between the care put into tending to the pages so, and the shitty, rented-out light that shone down upon it. 

He was probably just procrastinating at this point.

Sollux set the book back down, then lifted the cover. It opened all the way, which allowed it to make a small bumping noise against the desk. His eyes were immediately drawn to the words on the first page.

i am writing this in a twofold effort

the first is to establish some sort of foothold on the world so that vriska isnt the only one influencing its inhabitants

it will require a few time shenanigans to pull off but what are a few more of those in comparison to what it took to create this universe?

the second is to keep me from losing my mind while waiting

That wasn’t the beginning that Sollux was expecting. He was actually expecting something like a table of contents, or some sort of publication history. Instead, the very first page was covered in maroon text. It felt like he was reading someone’s diary as opposed to a religious work, especially given that it was in the first person. His dad’s copy had all been in the third person. It has also been written with correct grammar. He resumed reading.

even if it was inevitable that i do this i think that i would have liked to anyway

as such i have decided that i would write down my side of the story as it were

it isnt like her ancestor invented the concept of writing a journal after all

the easiest way to break up my experiences would probably be by form

out of courtesy to the population of this planet i will do my best to describe my own species and hope that it clears up any potential confusion

i started life as a troll and as a member of the most common caste

on my homeworld of alternia we were separated by blood color using a system we called the hemospectrum

Sollux groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose. He knew the basics about Alternia already. Practically everyone did! Figuring that he had gotten enough of a taste as to what exactly this was going to entail, he flipped through the pages, scanning for when the exposition ended. Hemospectrum, landdwellers and seadwellers, the voices of the dead, cycle of revenge, inevitability-- cycle of revenge! He started again from the top of the new page.

of course my misguided attempt at teaching her empathy would prove to be my demise

i thought that showing her the consequences of her actions might stir some feelings in her bloodpusher that had otherwise been locked away over the sweeps

but the moment that i thought myself better than the voices that had guided me

i joined them o_o

Sollux stifled a deeply inappropriate laugh here, which only led to the sound catching in his throat and coming out as a snort. Sure, at this point he had accepted that he was reading a weird diary-esque rendition of The Road To The Undoing, but seeing a casual emoticon in the middle of it was enough to disarm him even still.

this gave more fuel to the cycle of revenge that reverberated throughout our group

i just wish that she hadnt chosen her weapon in the way that she did

sollux didnt deserve it

i told him as much later on but that is a story for another time

if i could be grateful for anything that had happened over the course of that cycle it would probably be for the speed at which i died

turns out flesh and chitin are no match for the planets most powerful psionic

in an instant both my physical body and my hive were made into dust to be used by the surrounding flora

Sollux gritted his teeth. His dream of the event suddenly became framed as a story in his mind, and he was treated to the intrusive thought of seeing The Ram’s first death from her own perspective. Blinded by the flashing colors, but only for the most fleeting of moments before all traces of her were taken from the planet. The thought was drenched in guilt, even if Sollux logically knew that he had nothing to do with this. He was just empathetic. Stupidly, horribly, naively empathetic.

yet as detrimental as this may seem at first it was actually inevitable for me to die in this fashion!

it was required for the game to even occur in the first place as it allowed me to attune myself ever closer to the guiding voices

i was pointed to ruins that contained ancient code necessary for its creation

and so with my dictation and his translation

we coauthored the game that would end the world

i had to tell him that it would save the world for him to even be willing to undergo the venture but i was not and still am not adverse to a bit of omission

another facet of the inevitability that coursed through the veins of our universe was the order by which we were to enter the game

a specific chain that would link together the others attempts at separating what was always meant to be whole

i know that i should not feel sad over events that were destined to happen but i cannot help but write this with a feeling of melancholy

as not only was i supposed to die before entering the game

but he was too

“...Fuck.” This was the point of no return. What else could possibly count as the ‘major parts that the Mage lived and died through’ besides dying? If he read the rest of this passage, took in the contents as an inoculation against what could be his next nightmare, would it help him or only make him sick? 

Sollux kept going. He already had the book open, and now it, too, could function as a method of putting off what was meant to be. In this case, sleep.

i had only heard rumors about the deadly song of the horrorterror that took up residence in the vast oceans of alternia

if i heard anything more i would have died!

the psychically gifted were always much more susceptible to the culling attacks of the speaker of the vast glub

i have been admittedly curious as to what it felt like for him but in the absence of my knowing i can place speculation

i will give the full context for just how i know this later on but to keep it short

it was likely similar to how many of my alternate selves died

as opposed to a physical attack like an impalement or a burn it is like a welling up of the spirit until the vessel can no longer keep the energy inside

in my case it led to many explosions but in his it was probably a profuse amount of bleeding

it would be his first instance of martyring himself over the course of the game but certainly not his last

sgrub had a way of playing into themes and it would not let one such as cosmic duality off the hook so easily

Sollux closed his eyes; rubbed at his temple with a thumb. He spoke quietly, breathily, as if the book would overhear him otherwise. 

“Are you fucking kidding me?” 

He was seriously beginning to consider closing the book and going back to doing almost anything else. Setting it to the side and banging his head against the hardwood of his desk would be preferable to reading more. 

In a rare moment of choosing self-care, Sollux marked the page he was on with a maroon ribbon that had been tucked into the very back, closed the tome, and simply rested his head on his desk. He didn’t intend to fall asleep like that, as awful as it would feel on his neck and spine in the morning, but he would enter the purgatory between productivity and true rest before committing to either option. Maybe if he stayed like that for long enough, time would stop passing altogether. 

Maybe if he stayed like that for long enough, he wouldn’t have to contend with what would come next. 

It was useless to pretend that anything else would happen. What was Sollux’s life other than tragedy after stupid tragedy? He entered this world with blood on his hands, he was cursed with nightmares from his namesake who had blood on his hands, and there couldn’t possibly be any other way that things would go. He would crawl into bed like the useless meat sack he was, he would fall asleep, and he would dream of dying for Feferi. 

“Wait.” Wait, wait, wait. “How did I know that name?” He spoke quickly again, feverish as he lifted his head from his arms. It had entered his mind as naturally as all his other thoughts, but he had never heard it before in his life. It was six letters long, like the Two Goddesses and the few Minor Gods he was familiar with… Pushing the book to the side for the moment, he set his keyboard back where it belonged, and started typing in search queries. 

Hits came up immediately. He double-clicked on the first one. Some kind of web archive of information about the Minor Gods. Anything that could be scraped up from the vague ramblings of The Road To The Undoing, and the lengthy yet Spider-centric tales in The Thief’s Journal. Sollux started reading out loud, partly because there was nobody else around to judge him for it, and partly because if he said it with his own vocal cords, it might feel less frighteningly real. 

“The Witch of Life, Creator of The Hereafter, Caretaker to the Meek, Feferi Peixes.” 

The text reflected in the lenses of his glasses for a long time.

This… was a fluke. Right. Right! That was the only way that this made any sense. He had been around the block before, he had to have heard the name from somewhere. He had read The Road To The Undoing before, it had to have come up at some point. Didn’t the brain retain all the faces it saw so that it could recycle them in dreams, or something? This was probably exactly like that.

If only Sollux could buy into his lie that easily. 

It had been years since he read The Road To The Undoing, and it hadn’t even been a complete reading. 

When he scrolled down on the page, there was a list of entries in the journals where Feferi came up, either by name, epithet, or from context clues. Checking against his loaned copy would be useless-- Sollux was certain that it was some rare offshoot version that wouldn’t be accounted for in a website like this. The first one from The RTTU proper looked like it was around the same area that he was at. The text was in the same shade of maroon that he had just read from, but the style was something he was slightly more familiar with from his dad’s copy.

It was thus that Our Maid’s fate-entangled companion fell to the screams of the afterlife-giving abomination, yet it was okay, for She knew this to be inevitable. In service to preserving the proper timeline, The Witch of Life would be allowed to enter The Game, and by Her Aspect, She would repay The Mage in kind.

The second one was a little less than a hundred pages away.

The Third Form Maid felt a sense of relief in Her chassis as The Mage of Doom and The Witch of Life began to forge their bond. Jealousy would aid not in their quest, and it was with steel that could not plumb the true depths of Her infinite compassion and love that She told Her: “Feferi, Cherisher of the Living, I thank You from the bottom of My bloodpusher that You may provide Him with such comfort.”

He recognized none of the passage. It was much farther than he had ever gotten in the tome.

Sollux could feel his stomach knotting up. He wanted to vomit. To purge himself of this knowledge.

He got up. Went to the bathroom. Did so. 

It didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean anything. He was throwing a fit over something that didn’t mean anything. His brain was broken and fucked up and liable to pull stupid shit over the tiniest of things. Yet, as much as he told himself this, it felt insurmountable, like the weight of the universe was pulling at his intestines, crushing his chest, rending his soul from his body.

He wiped at his stained lips with his arm. His throat was burning from the lingering stomach acid that coated it, but he had no will to get up and wash it away with the sink, despite it being a mere few feet from him.

So much for self-care. 

Sollux didn’t know how long he spent bathed in the fluorescent lights of the apartment bathroom. Sprawled on the floor, his head against the side of the tub while his spindly legs ran up the cramped wall, it was a much worse position than the one he had been in at the desk. At some point, he had managed to at least flush the toilet, which purged the air of the stale scent of partly digested microwave food and acid. It also kickstarted a migraine, as the sound deafened him until it was replaced with the sound of silence. The pain was maintained by his eyes being positioned directly underneath the light, as not even his glasses and his eyelids remaining stalwartly shut would keep out the searing brightness. 

If he had any sense of self-worth, he would have gotten up. He thought about doing it. Multiple times, he ran through the mental play of being an actual human being. He’d get up, rinse the bad taste out of his mouth, try to eat something despite not feeling like it because he knew it would be good for him, and sleep.

Every time, he ran into the issue of sleep, and every time, he denied the fantasy and blinked himself back into his awful posture. The nightmare was going to happen, and it would only corroborate his fears. How would he explain it to Aradia, when he went back? ‘Hey, you were right about the nightmares, but before the next one happened a name popped into my head that I had no way of knowing about. Does that symbolize anything, or am I actually losing my mind?’

Maybe he could just wash his hands of this and mail the book back. He had the address to her store, and paying for postage would be far easier to do than face her again. He had gotten used to one nightmare, and so long as this one didn’t repeat as much as the last, he could cope with it for the rest of his natural born life.

That had to be the way out. Sollux got up, rinsed the taste out of his mouth, but didn’t eat for fear that it would upset his already churning stomach. When he slept, he had the nightmare, and when he woke up, he was energized only by the thought of being a little more free of this nonsense. He took the bus to the post office and paid actual money for a box and postage to mail the book back to Aradia when he could have just walked back. He stepped out of the building needing to readjust his eyes to the sunlight. His hands were a little cleaner. 

Sollux blinked himself back. His body was still on the bathroom floor. 

He couldn’t do that. Sure, he could absolutely do it to himself, but to Aradia? They only knew each other for a grand total of two days, but there was an aura about her that made him feel like it had been for longer. She had even tolerated his manic episode that morning without batting an eye. He didn’t like to admit it, but he respected her for somehow knowing where his boundaries laid. Talking about his mom? Sure, fine, he had gotten so used to it that it was practically a part of his introduction. Talking about every little thing that was wrong with his brain? He’d save that for the therapist he didn’t have.

“Ugh,” Sollux groaned. He was starting to get a serious crick in his neck. He needed to get over himself for once and just get up. The discomfort he was feeling was starting to override how almost all energy had been sapped from him. And so, he scooted himself up so that his head was no longer resting against the tub, tucked his legs back in, and assumed a slightly better sitting position, criss-cross on the floor. 

Then, he figured that if he was going this far, he might as well get up completely. 

His legs felt sore, and he knew for a fact that his neck was going to bother him for the next day or two now, but at least he wasn’t making it worse by languishing on hard tiles. Now that he was standing, he realized how little he wanted to be in the bathroom to begin with.

Sollux stepped out, and made good on at least one fantasy by visiting the sink. He swished tap water in his mouth until he couldn’t taste the acid against the backs of his teeth anymore; drank until his throat stopped stinging. Better. 

The primary issue of sleep was still at hand, but Sollux was too emotionally exhausted to keep fighting it. He was going to have to sleep at some point, and it would either be an anticipated move by his own hand, or whenever his brain decided that it was passing out time. This way, he had a little more control, he consoled himself as he returned to his bedroom.

When he got there, he stopped at the doorway to stare at his bed.

The begrudging acceptance of fate, indeed. 

\---

The view portal of his hive stem was lit up red. Red, black, red, black, like strobe lights ushering in the end times. 

Sollux was panicking. He wasted so much time fucking around on pointless memos; on the stupid team drama. He needed to get Feferi into the game. If he didn’t, if he fucked up in all the myriad amount of ways that he could possibly fuck up, then everyone else on the team would be screwed, too.

“What will you do when he comes?”

It wasn’t her voice. It sounded too emotional to be hers. Sollux wasn’t even sure if he would be able to hear Aradia mixed up in the voices of the doomed when she was a dimension away.

“Damn, when did I start bleeding...?”

The voices were something that he needed to put on the back burner. Let them fade into the background noise of fire running through the subgrub and the collisions of meteors pounding the surface of the planet. His fingers were tense and shaking as he placed game items, internally grateful that they could operate underwater. It would have been an even shittier game if not. What, this reality warping, armageddon-bringing daymare can generate architecture and create portals to other dimensions, but it couldn’t let fundamental mechanics operate with a bit of salt water? Sollux might have laughed.

“It’s her voice! It’s so loud!”

Sollux’s aural clots were starting to sting. There was a bit of warm wetness beginning to gather at the outside. He idly touched one with a finger, still moving the mouse around with the other to get everything set up,

“Litnee’s dead! She’s--”

and it came back yellow.

“AAAAAAAH!”

The voices were getting louder. More numerous. He needed to get her in the game. The underlying screech was starting to pick up, he could hear it, a numb ringing in the back of his head that threatened to blow his pans out if he focused on it for too long.

“No, no, no, no--”

He was blinking more. The very bottoms of his eyelids felt wet,

“Just one more perigee was all I wanted,”

but the substance was too thick to be tears.

“Make it stop, make it stop, make it stop,”

Sollux cursed under his breath.

“I can’t hold it off much longer…!”

He cursed again.

“Ghhhkhhh!”

The sound didn’t come out properly--

“I-It wasn’t m-meant to e-end like th-this!”

he choked on his own internal bleeding, spat out a mouthful onto the floor.

“The apocalypse is upon us!”

Almost there, just one more structure,

“I can’t feel anything,”

then he pushed himself from his desk,

“Help me! Help me!”

looked out the view portal,

“Please, please, please,”

and “fuck!” collapsed “ghhhhhh” in “I’m sor--” a “nooooo” bloody “oh god” heap.

“AAAAAHHHHH!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Funny how after I learned how to format Trollian logs nicely, I immediately stopped using logs. I, in fact, decided to dedicate a chapter to two separate things in need of color! Well, I hope it turned out alright, at any rate. A massive thanks to TTMIYH, who basically handed me everything I needed in order to do this on a silver platter. Considering that this chapter was a bit of a doozy, look forward to lighter content next time. Thank you to everybody who is giving this fic a chance!


	4. Room to Breathe

It was on a Thursday that Sollux decided that he would be going back out to Ram’s Skull. The last few days were a blur to him: Composed of barely scraping by in terms of physical survival and the amount of work he needed to do to stay on top of rent, it was more out of a necessity to divide up the days than anything else that he let the sunlight touch him again. He justified waiting to himself by saying that he had been slacking on his work, even if the potential benefits of being done with his nightmares would increase productivity long-term.

He only had the new nightmare once over that span of days, but he wasn’t going to sit around and wait for it to intensify on its own. 

Sollux had woken up late in the morning, so he contented himself with a brunch of frozen waffles. The rest of his process for getting ready was a tedious one that required neither depth nor description. He had been through the motions enough, and felt no need to add more to his internal dialogue. 

The walk to the bookstore was fine, even if Sollux found it a little more difficult to adjust to the light. There were no clouds in the sky to speak of, and so the sun brought down its full, unfiltered fury. Stepping inside the store helped immensely. 

Aradia was at the front counter when Sollux entered this time. Wearing her dark brown hair up in a ponytail held by a maroon scrunchie, a t-shirt with the Ram’s Skull logo on it (predictably, it was the skull of a ram), and a pair of jeans, she looked less like she was running the store and more like she was some kind of fan sneaking behind the counter.

“Sollux, hi!” She chimed when she saw him, beaming a wide smile. When she stepped to the side to stand a little closer to the door, he noticed not only how her hair bounced with the motion, but a necklace, too: A rose gold Aries symbol on a chain. It always had to be somewhere, he supposed.

“Hey, Aradia,” Sollux greeted back. “Look, sorry for the radio silence, I...” He paused, unable to find the right words now that she was in front of him. 

“Oh, that’s okay! I figured as much,” she completed his concerns, raising her hands up a little in the air non-threateningly. “I have all the time in the world.”

“Yeah, uh, speaking of which.” His heart felt like it was going to burst out of his chest from anxiety, but he quelled the pounding sound in his eardrums long enough to speak in coherent English. “You remember how you said we could do something other than… You know,” he sighed, making a hand motion between the two of them, “I want to take you up on that offer. I just, I need to get this shit out of my head for a while.”

“Of course! Do you have anywhere in mind?” Aradia asked as she started walking around the counter.

“Whoa, wait, right now?” Sollux took a small step back towards the door out of reflex.

“I’m free right now! Is this not a good time?” She was standing in front of him now.

“Yes, I mean no, but-- aren’t you busy? Are you ever busy with this place, or is your job description just dusting books and talking to chumps?” 

“I appreciate the concern,” Aradia started, her lips curled up into a lopsided smile, “but if I say that I’m free, I really mean it. We could stay close to the store, if it helps, but I do like to get out of this stuffy place and stretch my legs every once in a while!” 

“Shit,” Sollux cursed passively to himself, “alright, fine. What exactly is around here anyway?”

“Plenty, if you know where to look! The ice cream place next door is surprisingly good,” Aradia mentioned, nudging her head to the side where the building would be, were it not blocked by the wall of Ram’s Skull.

“Ice cream? Aradia, it’s literally--” Sollux raised some of his upper lip in shallow annoyance before pulling out his phone from his back pocket.

“11:46 AM,” Sollux finished.  
“11:46 AM,” Aradia said at the same time. 

Sollux blinked, then silently turned around to check if there was a clock above the doorway. There wasn’t. He turned back around to look at Aradia, brows furrowed. 

Aradia chuckled. “I just have a good sense of…”

Sollux stood there for a few seconds, watching as Aradia’s expression grew from one of mild amusement to looking as if she was going to burst into laughter at any second. Her eyebrows were high on her face, and while she continued to smile, it grew increasingly uneven until he was certain she was going to crack under the weight of her own dubious pun.

“Time,” Sollux supplied. 

“...”

“Time,” he repeated.

“...”

“Goddesses, we’re actually doing this--”

“Time!” Aradia exclaimed, her expression rapidly righting itself into a sly grin and a wink, while her hands made finger guns at Sollux.

Delayed by a few more seconds, he let out a strained yet genuine snort of a laugh. 

“In all seriousness,” Aradia resumed, “is ice cream alright with you? I stopped caring about the expectations that were attached to certain hours of the day a while ago.”

“I ate before I left, but I can just hang out, I guess.” 

“Great! Let’s go!” With a smile that could take on the world, Aradia flipped the sign dangling on one of the doors from ‘open’ to ‘closed’. She then opened the door, looked back to Sollux, and stepped out. 

The sunlight stung at the edges of Sollux’s eyes as he followed Aradia. He initially walked so that they were side-by-side, which was a feat aided by the height that he had on her. While she walked next to him for a few bounds, she proved herself just as liable to walk ahead, all while emanating an aura of unbridled excitement. It was kind of weird that she was getting hyped up for something as silly as ice cream at noon, but it was something that Sollux could focus on. He was grateful for that.

The Limestone Tablet Creamery was an almost humble chain store, unassuming in its purported worth. The outside walls were awash in faded pinks and creams, which was a trend that continued inside, from what Sollux could see when he made it to the glass doors. At least the colors wouldn’t threaten to burn out his eyes as much as the sun was. Aradia had already made it to the front, and was waiting for him while rocking on her heels.

Sollux raised an eyebrow, but said nothing. He opened a door and held it for her. 

“Thanks!” Aradia stepped in, walked to the side, then turned on her heels to wait for him to cross the threshold between indoors and out. He did, and found himself immediately annoyed at the transition to artificial light, as opposed to relieved that he was out of the sun.

“I’m going to go ahead and order. Feel free to find a place for us to sit!” 

As Aradia went up to the counter and started looking through the flavors on display, Sollux picked a booth that was in the rough center of the store, and sat so that his back was to the windows. 

When she came back a minute later, she had a bowl of rocky road in her hands, with a tiny plastic spoon piercing the topmost scoop. It was dropped onto the table from a few inches with an artificial sound, and Aradia herself followed suit when she happily sat down in the booth seat opposite Sollux. 

“I’m guessing you don’t do this too often?” He mused aloud. 

“I think that would ruin the fun of it,” Aradia responded, plucking her spoon from its place. “Doing the same thing for too long ruins the novelty. I want to be able to experience everything I possibly can!” 

Sollux thought to himself as Aradia paused to take a bite from her ice cream. It was either pretty good, or she was overreacting, because he swore he saw her shudder before she swallowed. She smiled at him when she spoke up again. 

“So, what do you like to do? You mentioned work once, but nothing outside of that.” 

“Like, as a hobby? Fuck if I know. Coding used to be my hobby back when I had the time for that shit,” Sollux shrugged, leaning back into his seat, “but then I realized it was the only thing that I was really good at, so I figured I might as well make people pay me to do it.”

“Do you still like it?”

“Yeah, of course I do. I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t. It gets frustrating sometimes, sure, but I don’t know what else I would go for.” 

“Mm,” Aradia hummed affirmatively, having been caught with some of the rocky road still in her mouth. She swallowed. “I’m sure you would be able to figure something out. You’re young!” Aradia paused for a moment, looking at Sollux up and down. “Now that I think about it, how old are you?”

“22,” he answered with a tone that dripped with anticipation for when he would be 23. 

“You still have so much life ahead of you!” Aradia assured him, pointing her plastic spoon in his direction. “So don’t count out any possibilities, okay?”

“You sound like a grandma,” Sollux scoffed. “I should be the one asking how old you are.”

“I turn 22 next April!” 

“Huh. When exactly is your birthday?”

“The 10th,” Aradia smiled knowingly. 

“Shit, the stars really aligned for you, didn’t they? A Cultist named Aradia, and a born Aries too.”

“I suppose so.”

Aradia’s smile waned as the two fell into a silence. She was eating almost methodically, doing her best to get a little bit of everything into each of her bites. Sollux watched for a moment, then realized how creepy it was that he was just staring at her, then started looking around the interior of the ice cream place before realizing that it was immensely boring. 

“Since you asked me,” he cut through the silence, “I might as well ask you what you like to do. You seem to have a lot of free time.”

“I do! I have been doing my best with upkeep in regards to the bookstore, and of course I have my Maid duties, but I’ve been cycling through a few different things. Urban exploration, amateur archaeology, anything that really reminds me of where I am and where we all come from. I’ve also recently taken up writing!”

“Yeah?” Sollux raised an eyebrow, admittedly intrigued. “What do you write about?”

“My life, mostly. I suppose you could call it a diary of sorts, but I think I’m putting more effort into it than is typical. There are certain memories that I believe I would like to keep straight while I have them, so that I can remember them with more clarity later on.”

“Okay, now you really sound like a grandma. Please stop before I feel the need to order a Life Alert for you.”

Aradia laughed. “Come on! I know I’m not that old, but I think it’s good to get a head start on these things! Don’t you ever consider your future? The person that you might become?”

“That’s kind of a luxury, isn’t it?” Sollux started to feel a little concerned for where the conversation was going, but at least it wasn’t about what he was trying to avoid at the moment.

“I used to think so, but I’m not sure if that applies to me anymore.” 

“Right,” Sollux rolled his eyes as he spoke, “the dream bubbles, where you get to exist in memory jigsaw hell until, what, the heat death of the universe? Even after that? Enlighten me, I never got that far in the journals.”

“I don’t know how long they will last, either,” Aradia admitted, relieved that they had found something partway relevant to discuss that wouldn’t brush up against his nightmares. “With how vague the texts were in regards to them, relatively speaking of course, I doubt that even the Two Goddesses know.” 

“Wow, blasphemous! You had better stop hanging out with me, Aradia, I think you’re starting to pick up some bad habits!” Sollux couldn’t help but grin, but it was a tight motion, careful not to open his mouth too much to show the glint of a lisp-enabling maw. 

“But I like hanging out with you.”

“...Oh.” Out of all of her possible responses, that was somehow the one that disarmed Sollux the most. He did his best to beat down whatever subconscious system in his body created blush. “Thanks, I guess. This is… nice for me, too.”

Aradia smiled widely, showing off perfectly straight teeth. “Speaking of which! Did you want some other way of contacting me? I don’t think it’s necessarily fair to make you walk over every time you want to talk.” 

“Yeah, that’s fine,” Sollux responded, reaching for his phone to take down her number.

“Do you use Trollian at all?” 

Sollux stopped reaching for his phone. “Trollian? The shitty client hardly even used by middle schoolers having identity crises a decade ago, which was their target audience?”

“Yes, that’s the one!” 

“Holy shit. I mean, I guess, I had an account, yeah.” 

“Good! Mine is apocalypseArisen. Feel free to add me if you want. I use it surprisingly often, so it is one of the better ways of getting in touch with me if you ever want to chat.”

Sollux stifled the urge to make a comment about her trolltag. If he did, and he contacted her such that she could see his own, it would only bring him trouble. At least he wouldn’t have any trouble remembering it, unique as it was. “I’ll keep it in mind.” 

“That’s all I ask for.” 

When Aradia went for her next bite of ice cream, the spoon scraped against the bottom of the bowl, collecting what Sollux assumed to be the remnants of marshmallows and nuts. When she finished it, she slid the newly empty bowl to the side, then leaned in to rest her elbows on the table. 

“I appreciate you going with me like this,” she spoke to him, taking the opportunity to make eye contact now that she wasn’t distracted by eating. “I know it wasn’t something that you had planned for, but it’s nice to break away from the expected.”

Sollux let out a puff of air. “I’m not gonna lie. Things have been a fucking mess ever since they became unexpected, but at least everything isn’t a fucking mess.” 

“That’s the spirit!” Again with that smile as bright as the sun, but it was just a flash before she focused on grabbing her trash and scooting out from the booth. “Come on, I’m done here.” 

Shrugging, Sollux slid out and followed her outside. She paused for a moment to throw out her trash and give a last thank you to the cashier, but it was just a second after that the two would be back in the sunlight. As they walked back, Aradia stayed next to Sollux this time, though her gaze wandered between buildings, the sky, and the concrete, as if trying to see if anything had changed while she wasn’t looking.

When they turned the corner, however, they both watched as someone walked into Ram’s Skull. 

“Oh!” Aradia practically jumped in place, tensing as if preparing to sprint. “We must have taken longer than I thought we would, sorry, I need to take this, today was fun!” Spoken like a single word, she then ran off to the entrance, but stopped just as she got to the doors again. In a fluid motion, she smoothed out her mussed hair, opened the door, and gave a greeting that Sollux only heard the cheerful tone of, not the content. 

By the time he walked back up to the entrance himself, he glanced in through the doors, but both Aradia and her customer were somewhere outside of his range of vision. He decided to keep walking. No use in waiting just to give an awkward goodbye, especially when he had her Trollian account. 

Sollux didn’t act on it immediately. When he got back to his apartment, he mulled over the idea; opened the severely outdated Trollian website in a tab that was quickly forgotten about amidst the hundred others he had open at any given time. He would have to reinstall it, remember his password, and go through the sickening wave of nostalgia and shame of actually using the client. It was easier to focus on his projects. 

And yet, much like the tome before it, the tab had a way of eating at him. It was well into the night by the time he had been pressed enough to click on the tab again, sign in using his old credentials that it was a miracle he had remembered, and download the clunky zip file. 

He wondered if he would keep it for long enough that he would get back into modding the damn thing into some semblance of usability. 

Well, all that was left was to add her. It seemed that she was already online, which didn’t surprise him. He hoped he hadn’t kept her waiting. A bit of guilt bubbled up in the pit of his stomach when she accepted his request the moment he sent it, but he suppressed it in favor of digging himself deeper into his self-dug hole.

twinArmageddons [TA] began trolling apocalypseArisen [AA]  


TA: its sollux.  
TA: i have no idea if you were expecting anyone else to do a faceplant into your dms on this dead ass client, but just so you know.  


In the upstairs room of her store, Aradia was leaned up against her recuperacoon, staring at the new messages on her palmhusk. It was strange to see Sollux typing without any quirk to speak of, and briefly, she wondered if he would pick up one of his old ones when he remembered again.

AA: sollux! hi! :D  
AA: no i was not expecting anyone else  
TA: alright, cool.  
TA: i also have no idea why you didnt throw out literally any other method of communication.  
TA: literally nobody uses trollian anymore, FUCK.  
TA: you could have just given me your fucking phone number or something, at least then i wouldnt have to deal with the cringe that is seeing what happens when a 13 year old me is allowed to name accounts.  
AA: i think its a nice username!  
TA: yeah, of course you think that.  
TA: any reference to the end of days is like softcore porn to cultists.  
TA: fuck, this was a mistake, i dont know how youre gonna be able to focus with the tantalizing crystalization of my fuckups gracing your friends list now.  
AA: o_o  
AA: sollux you dont have to be so nervous  
AA: i just thought it would be nice to use trollian!  
AA: you cant type using color in a simple phone text  
TA: not with that attitude.  
AA: well it isnt something that is as easy as inputting a hex code here  
AA: communication method aside how has your night been?  
TA: fine, i guess.  
TA: nothing mind-bogglingly awful has happened in the past few days so i consider that to be a win.  
TA: you?  
AA: its been nice!  
AA: it is such a beautiful night out  


Aradia turned right to look out the little window, and with her proximity to it, she was able to see the single, blindingly bright white moon shine in its lunar cycle. It was almost certainly full, or if not, it would be tomorrow night. She started typing again.

AA: the moon here is so strange but so  


She stopped. Could she get away with talking about the strangeness of the moon? Of how it was utterly devoid of color, full of possibility, and in the singular? Would he think her strange for it in terms that were acceptable, or would omissions turned lies threaten to pile up at that point? 

Aradia held down the backspace key until the text box was empty.

AA: the temperature is perfect for walking!  
TA: are you out right now?  
AA: no but i think i would like to be  


Her bloodpusher always felt like it beat a little faster whenever she was indoors-- the kind of stuttering, shallow beats that gave way to shallow breaths. The respiteblock above the shop felt constricting, but so would the inside of a vast, open museum. She longed to be able to look up and see all the stars in the night sky.

AA: do you like the outdoors sollux?  


Aradia tapped the power button on her palmhusk and stuck it in her back pocket before stepping out of the respiteblock. She had to go back to looking human, but not getting to feel the cool night air against her wings in exchange for feeling it at all was a worthwhile trade to her. When she started walking down the sidewalk, no direction or destination in mind, she pulled her palmhusk back out. The wind rustled her hair in a way that got in her face for a moment, but she tucked the loose strand back behind her ear while reading what messages she had missed.

TA: shit, yeah, i love it.  
TA: love it so much i got sick of it years ago and decided to hole up in my room for the rest of my natural born life.  
AA: well i was wondering if you would like to go somewhere with me tomorrow night  
AA: somewhere outside :)  
AA: or partially outside at least  
TA: partially outside?  
AA: yes partially outside!  
TA: do i get to ask where it is specifically or am i going to be left with this vague ram bullshit.  


Maroon lips pursed together. She thought that this would get easier if she was outside for it. It had only ever grown easier and easier to dip into her habit of omission ever since her death. Back in the game proper, it felt like she had been dexterously avoiding doomed timeline after doomed timeline by way of carefully redacted information. Did failstates still exist in this new form of the game, or had they, too, metamorphosed into something unrecognizable to her? Aradia decided to compromise.

AA: normally i would not be so blunt but i think that it might be prudent here  
AA: it might not be a pleasant place for you  
AA: if you are struggling with the road to the undoing  
TA: i never said that i was struggling with it.  
TA: i just needed some time.  
TA: im free then anyway. besides, being alone on a friday night would be pathetic.  
AA: great! come by around 7 with an empty stomach and an open mind :)  


Her legs had taken her to the gate of a park that was supposed to be closed. Aradia looked around for signs of movement, then quickly floated herself over the gate. Her feet landed on the gravel with a muted crunch.

TA: sure thing.  


Unknowing of how else to continue the conversation, and wanting to take in her physical surroundings, Aradia smiled to herself before putting her palmhusk away once more. Despite her outwardly human appearance, she retained her trollian ability to see in the dark, and she used it to take in the trees swaying in the light breeze. The planet was so non-lethal, and while strange flora and fauna certainly existed in Earth’s biological rotation, at least it lacked toxic trees that killed neighboring plants when they shed their poisonous leaves. 

The disguised Goddess walked down the gravel path, only to deviate every now and again to walk through the collecting dew. Sometimes she would feel the bark of an interesting looking tree. Sometimes she would find a water fountain and see if it worked. She spotted a lone bench in the distance, just next to the path, and she walked on it if only to reach it a little faster. 

The metal was cool against her as she sat, positioned at the side and resting an arm on the curved armrest she could reach. If she looked at it at the perfect angle, she could see the circle of the moon reflected in the steel, just beneath where her fingertips curled. 

“This place was founded decades ago,” Aradia commented to herself, though she looked to the side of the bench that was unoccupied. “Of all the places in this world founded over the course of thousands of years, I wonder why it was here that decided to host two of our reincarnated friends?”

Aradia paused; blinked at the spot on the bench. She then turned to look ahead of her. 

“It makes things easier for me, at least. Separated by a couple tens of years isn’t as big a deal for me as it would be for those with differing aspects. Time can be a physical space, just as much as space is but the container for time. Of course, you only cared for how your own aspect could benefit our efforts. I couldn’t blame you. They did prove to be critical to discovering where our friends are. Who would have thought that throwing lucky darts at a map would be as prophetic as any tool forged from alchemy?” 

Still nothing from her non-existent partner in conversation. Aradia sighed.

“I find it difficult to talk to you. I think everyone finds it difficult to talk to you. We should have tried to work together, but neither of us are ready for that. You’re too busy trying to prove yourself, and I’m… talking to a bench.”

She ran a hand through her hair. The path her fingers took was unobstructed by her hidden horns, which made for a liberating if strange experience. Once she was caught on a tangle, she reached to pull her palmhusk back out and see if Sollux had added anything while she wasn’t paying attention. He hadn’t. 

“That’s okay. It feels natural this way.” She turned it off. The chitin case clattered against the metal bench as she dropped it inches from its gravity-ordained destination. 

“I find it difficult to talk to you, too. I like talking to you, but you can like challenging things, right?” She smiled to herself privately. “It won’t get easier until it does, and then we can catch up.

Just like we promised.”

Aradia looked up to the bright light of the lone moon, the glow reflecting in her dim irises just as it reflected in the glass of Sollux’s window. He wouldn’t see it, as he was already wrapped in the sheets of his bed, sleeping an uninterrupted sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’ve been having a lot of fun writing At Aphelion so far, but I’m unsure if I’ll be able to keep up this kind of rapid update “schedule” throughout the whole thing. I’m going to be starting college classes soon, and even while I’ve been on break, it’s been pretty taxing! In short, it’s going to start taking me longer stretches of time to write chapters. I don’t know how long it will be in its completed form, or how long it will take, but rest assured that I do want to finish this. Thank you to everyone who has expressed interest in this fanfic!


End file.
